Patient safety management in the medication use process: prevention and management of medication error

Medication errors, resulting in risks to patient safety, occur throughout the entire medication use process, and include prescribing errors, dispensing errors, administering errors, and patient compliance errors. The results of many reports and studies on medication errors in several countries including the United States show that medication errors occur commonly, are costly and are often preventable. Medication errors involve a breakdown in more than one aspect of the medication use system such as lack of knowledge, standard performance and mental lapses, and defects or failure in the organizational system. Such medication errors compromise patient confidence in the healthcare system and increase healthcare costs. Hospitals must take a medication error prevention approach and also prepare various methods of managing medication errors once they have occurred. The necessity of a medication error reporting system should be emphasized. In Korea, with regard to medication errors, we have a long way to go. We have no documented data available on error rates, no published studies, and no error reporting system. In conclusion, medication errors are no longer a guarded, guilty-ridden professional secret in Korea. They should be considered problems in public healthcare policy. Therefore, we need to establish a medication error prevention and management system at the national level including a national error reporting system in the near future.